The current explosion in the use of fiber optic technology in electronic subcomponents for telecommunications and data processing is well recognized and has been well document in the art. Along with the increased use and availability of integrated optical circuits and other opto-electronic (OE) components, widely varied connectors, interfaces and packaging techniques have also come into widespread use. A common requirement of all such devices, however, is the highly precise placement and retention of components requiring optical coupling. Examples of such are the positioning of fiber optic wave guides relative to laser array chips and the alignment of light emitting diodes (LEDs) with sapphire ball lenses, to name just a few.
The well known and often used technique of solder bump mounting has heretofore provided a vehicle for critical placement and orientation of certain components as applied to a single, common substrate or other workpiece surface. The precision and advantages afforded by solder bump mounting are, however, not available when the items requiring alignment are parts of separate sub-assemblies which will not or cannot be solder bump mounted together, but can only be held in place by an adhesive, mechanical pressure or other such means of attachment. Such techniques do not afford a mechanism for accurate alignment of these separate parts.
There is, therefore, an urgent and critical need in the art for a method of aligning components with a precision approaching that of solder bump mounted components, but affording the flexibility of mating these components by methods other than conventional solder bump mounting. The present invention provides such a method.